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At 09:07 -0500 2003.09.13, Peter da Silva wrote: >I'm sorry, but I can't come up with a reading of that sentence >other than something like "using Perl safely requires more care, >attention to detail, and knowledge of trivia than any other language >or tool". > >I don't think that's actually true. C++, for example, probably has >Perl beat in this area since it's got BOTH badly designed ad-hoc >syntax AND buffer overflows. Yes, and that gets more to the point. It's not that Perl requires more care etc., it is that Perl makes it easier to do bad things. It doesn't, conversely, make it harder to do good things. I think your example of C++ is a fine one, where it is hard to do *anything*, good or bad. >That kind of attitude is even useful. It rewards the kind of >concentration it takes to become knowledgable about a complex >subject, and builds cameraderie among the initiated. BUT, it can >also lead to people treating the difficulties that the uninitiated >have as "personal problems" rather than something that should be >reconsidered and if possible done away with. The problem is that you are attacking particular uses of Perl, particular styles of coding, which is not, in my experience, the norm. Perhaps in yours it is, and for that, you have my pity. >No doubt there will be Perl cowboys who despair over the loss of >every jot and tittle of unnecessary obscurity, but most of them >will end up happily using and defending the new language and >complaining when they have to deal with old-school Perl 5 scripts. Unlikely. The new language represents too much of a departure from what we currently know as Perl. I am tempted to do a hates-rant about Perl 6, but Simon Cozens is on this list, and he could offer a better one than I. :-) -- Chris Nandor pudge@xxxxx.xxx http://pudge.net/ Open Source Development Network pudge@xxxx.xxx http://osdn.com/
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